THE DEVELOPMENT OF ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT DELIVERY AND ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING IN THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY Available to Purchase

The CEC has embarked on a two‐year programme to encourage the creation of new systems in electronic document delivery and electronic storage — the DOCDEL programme, which is co‐financed by the CEC and independent consortia. Ten experiments have been selected for support: TRANSDOC; Electronic Publishing of Patent Information; EURODOCDEL; The Electronic Magazine; Electronic Journals in Chemistry; a CEA proposal to place a mathematical journal online with Questel; two electronic newsletters in the fields of information technology and the information industry; a project to devise standardized methods for handling complex texts and difficult character sets within an integrated electronic publishing system; a proposal to create a system which will reduce the costs of printing low volumes of scientific documents; and a network of electronic invisible colleges for the rapid circulation of grey literature and pre‐published material. The experiments have raised several issues of concern, one of which is standards. CEC will identify these areas, draft standards and encourage their early adoption. Another area of concern is the need to build up experience of microcomputers on international public data networks. A full evaluation programme of the experiments will be undertaken by an independent team over a period of at least 15 months.